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Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test
- yieldcrv 5mo agoIts not “where is the crystal” its “when is the crystal”
- DrSiemer 5mo agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20260516000259/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-crystals-found-inside-wreckage-from-the-first-nuclear-bomb-test/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260516000259/https://www.scien...
- kleiba2 5mo agoSounds like the plot of a B movie...
- rectangleboy 5mo agoSomething like this came up in Robert R. McCammon's 1987 book Swan Song[1], one of the first novels to win the Bram Stoker award[2] for Best Novel (alongside Stephen King's Misery that year). One of the survivors finds a glass ring (something like trinitite) among the post-nuclear-blast rubble of Saks Fifth Avenue[3] in New York and sees visions of the future (or something) through it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_(McCammon_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_(McCammon_novel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker_Award#External_links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker_Award#External_lin... [3] my memories of this book may be embellishing this a bit....
- Schiendelman 5mo agoSwan Song, coincidentally, is getting a pilot as a TV series. I'm not sure if it's gotten stuck in development hell or if it's actually going somewhere, it's only been 18 months or so since screenwriting started.
- jdkoeck 5mo agoInteresting! Is it any good? Did it age well?
- 0xEF 5mo agoOr the start of a new cult? Which could also result in a B movie, I guess.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoFor God's sake man! You must learn to shield your thoughts from the crystals!
- asimovDev 5mo agoFound footage movie, combining Trinity Test and Philadelphia Experiment maybe? I think it has legs
- meffmadd 5mo ago…or basically the plot of twin peaks
- CodeArtisan 5mo agoThe video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R is happening in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, an area filled with super natural anomalies and artifacts due to the radiation. A legend/rumor says that there is a special crystal granting any wish at the center of the zone, inside the power plant's sarcophagus. The existence of the crystal can't be verified because a cultist faction, The monolith, is preventing anyone to reach the center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chernobyl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Cher...
- yieldcrv 5mo agoOxen Free prequel incoming
- elnatro 5mo ago[dead]
- dmurray 5mo agoWhat was special about the first nuclear test, rather than the thousands of others, at least hundreds of which were also in the Nevada desert? Obviously it's historically significant, and the new forms of matter were first discovered there , so that's why trinitite is named after the site. But 80 years later, wouldn't we expect the other bomb sites to have just as many interesting chemical reactions?
- lightsighter 5mo agoThe Trinity test took place in New Mexico, not Nevada.
- LAsteNERD 5mo agoTrinity: https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/0922-revising-trinity https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/0922-revising-t...
- eesmith 5mo agoWe do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite#Similar_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite#Similar_materials says "Occasionally, the name trinitite is broadly applied to all glassy residues of nuclear bomb testing, not just the Trinity test" and lists hiroshimaite and kharitonchiki as similar glassy residues from Hiroshima and the Semipalatinsk Test Site, respectively. The general term for for the fused glass-like material formed during a nuclear test" seems to be "atomsite" - https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/3001767 https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/3001767 . Some images of atomsite from the Trinity and Semipalatinsk test sites are at http://www.radioaktivitaet.uni-bremen.de/downloads/Pittauerova_P16_31.pdf http://www.radioaktivitaet.uni-bremen.de/downloads/Pittauero... As a wild guess, what's special is it might be the easiest to get, with many samples to study.
- kombookcha 5mo agoAdding to this, I seem to recall that the specific geological/chemical conditions on the site is consequential for the sorts of glass produced. So presumably, Hiroshmiaite and Trinitite would actually be physically distinct as a material. As I recall, research on meteorite impacts use the similarly formed Impactite to deduce various things about ancient impact sites. As an aside, I think they also do really elaborate calculations of force and angle of impact based on surveying the spread pattern and distribution of these little glass chunks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impactite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impactite
- josteink 5mo agoWhile the news is interesting in itself, I found the lack of illustrations disappointing. When discussing new novel molecular structures, one would think providing a concrete visuals of what they look like more interesting than human-scale photos of materials containing them?
- autoexec 5mo ago> The only other known naturally forming quasicrystal was found inside meteorite fragments Does it really count as "naturally forming" if we had to artificially construct and detonate a nuke during a carefully conducted experiment to create this one?
- Towaway69 5mo agoWe’re a product of nature, it’s mistaken to believe we are above nature or that nuclear weapons aren’t also part of nature. We’re also very much dependent on nature and natural forces. So everything we do is, even if many steps removed, still an act of nature.
- 4gotunameagain 5mo agoThis is a valid argument, albeit a pointless one. We use the term natural specifically to distinguish between the.. natural and artificial. A term like that is necessary.
- lwhi 5mo agoI think sometimes the distinction is made between natural and artificial (human made) as a way to sway an argument. In many of these cases, the reasoning is tenuous if we examine with an understanding that the difference is sometimes arbitrary. If anything, we should be more careful with our use of language. For instance; 'naturally ocurring' vs. 'human made'.
- dylan604 5mo agoA similar one is synthetic. We've used that label for things like synthetic oil, but there are a lot of other things that are synthesized because it is too difficult to get the material naturally.
- autoexec 5mo agoDiamonds are also product of nature, but when we grow them in a lab they aren't often considered to be "naturally formed". It's just that the lab we used in this instance was part of the Jornada del Muerto.
- zelphirkalt 5mo agoOne language usage question, and one content question: "Melted sand"?? Isn't it "molten sand"? Is my hunch completely wrong, or is the author not a native speaker? Neither am I, but melted sand sounds so weird to my ears. This all happened in a matter of seconds, so atoms didn’t have time to arrange into stable structures,[...] Isn't seconds kinda like ages at that scale? Atoms needing longer than seconds to arrange under super high pressure sounds also dubious? But I am no expert in that area.
- junofan 5mo agoThe sand melted, yielding a type of glass. Melt emphasizes a change.
- thejohnconway 5mo agoTo my ears “Molten” would imply that the sand is currently in liquid form. The sense ”melted” is used here, as having been melted, seems right. You melt sand to get molten sand, right?
- zarzavat 5mo ago"Melted sand" sounds strange because English already has a word for that: "glass".
- radiorental 5mo ago[dead]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- rjp0008 5mo agoThink of dropping a water balloon onto a pin. It pops instantly, but the water (like the temperature and overpressure) takes a while to dissipate into a puddle.
- bandrami 5mo ago
- rafacribas 5mo agoThe second image from the article looks like caelid map from elden ring
- frereubu 5mo ago> The clathrate’s “cage” shapes are 12-sided dodecahedrons and 14-sided tetrakaidecahedrons made of silicon atoms... Totally OT but if "dodeca" means 12, why isn't 14 just "tetradeca"? What's the "kai" for?
- normie3000 5mo agokai means "and" I guess like asking why 120 is said "one hundred and twenty" in some dialects. Maybe that's how 14 and 12 are written in Greek.
- frereubu 5mo agoAh I see, thanks!
- HighGoldstein 5mo agoThe Greek term would be decatetrahedron.
- normie3000 5mo agoApologies - Ancient Greek!
- adrian_b 5mo agoAncient Greeks did not say "dekatetra" for 14, i.e. ten-four, but as it is correctly written in TFA, they said "tetrakaideka" for 14, i.e. "four-and-ten", which is actually close to English "fourteen". For example, already Aristotle used "dipoda" (2-feet) for humans and birds, "tetrapoda" (4-feet) for other terrestrial vertebrates and "hexapoda" (6-feet) for insects. After the same model one can say "oktopoda" (8-feet) about spiders and "tetrakaidekapoda" (14-feet) about woodlice.
- gapan 5mo agoAs the sibling comment already said "kai" (pronounced ke like in keg) just means "and". So it literally means 4 and 10 sides in greek. But I have often seen it written as τετραδεκάεδρο (tetradecahedron) in greek as well, so without the kai part. I'm not sure why it is 4 and 10 instead of 14 though. It would be more natural in greek that way (δεκατετράεδρο - decatetrahedron). Maybe it is for putting the distinctive part (4) first, or maybe it sounded more "poetic" like that to someone and then it stuck.
- emptybits 5mo ago> "a quasicrystal — a kind of matter scientists once thought impossible that challenges traditional ideas about how solids form" Whenever I read a phrase about scientists observing something they thought was impossible ... I get really excited for scientists in that field! :-)
- kridsdale1 5mo agoScience advances one “huh, that’s weird” at a time.
- spoll 5mo agoThere's a wonderful book by one of the discoverers of quasicrystals, Paul Steinhardt, called "The second kind of impossible" which is a fantastic read and full of the excitement you alluded to. Very accessible and enjoyable.
- pseudohadamard 5mo agoJust a note, clathrates in general aren't rare or exotic at all, in fact methane clathrates are estimated in the million-cubic-km range. It's this specific type of clathrate, created under exotic circumstances, that's unusual.